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ELDORADO, Texas - His cowboy hat stained with perspiration, Gene sits at a table inside the local Town and Country Food Store sipping coffee and puffing on a King Edwards Little Cigar.
For 16 years, the retired cattle rancher has lived in this small west Texas town, a place surrounded by grass and shrub atop the Edwards Plateau. West of here, the earth gently slopes. To the east, it rises in the Texas Hill Country.
"It's kind of a whistling point for the wind," said retired carpenter and friend Fritz Dorie, delighted at the breath of cool air this Saturday morning.
Maybe it was his sun-drenched days in this open space that instilled in Gene (who declined to give his last name) and others like him a sense of unbridled freedom.
Perhaps that's why, when the Texas government showed up ready to storm the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' Yearning for Zion Ranch on April 3, he was sympathetic to the FLDS.
"How would you like someone coming into your house for no damn reason?"
It's a sentiment that sits squarely in the heart of west Texans' ambivalent feelings about the raid.
The FLDS, some here say, should have the freedom to practice their religion - unless they're breaking the law. Allowing men to "spiritually" marry and impregnate minor women fits that mold.
"So you see how we're torn here," said John Begnaud, a retired Tom Green County extension agent. "We want to be left alone to do the things we want to do as long as they're within the law."
A NEW NEIGHBOR: When the FLDS first moved to the YFZ Ranch in 2004, the people of Eldorado feared yet another Branch Davidian compound was springing up in their own backyard.
"The first thing that comes to mind is that Waco thing," said Sylvia Belman, standing in her backyard after mowing the lawn.
But in time, they discovered their concerns were unfounded. The FLDS were hardworking, often spending their nights toiling under lamps to finish constructing buildings on the ranch. They also proved to be resourceful, living off the land in hard scrabble country.
"There was no harm, no damage, no animosity for the most part," Begnaud said. "But there was always mystery."
It was the FLDS' secrecy that may have been the sect's undoing, he said, an observation that was also made by Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff at a Salt Lake County Bar Association luncheon last week.
"There's no transparency with the people who are being charged to prove they didn't do anything wrong," Begnaud said.
That the raid was triggered by what may prove to be a prank phone call doesn't bother him and others in Eldorado and San Angelo. A woman was in imminent danger, they say, so the authorities were obligated to investigate it. Whether the FLDS' constitutional rights were ignored will be up to the courts to sort out later.
For Dorie, it's simpler than that. "Who cares as long they got to go in there and see what's going on," he said. "I don't know. Thirteen-year-old, 14-year-old girls having babies just ain't right."
CULTURE SHOCK: Once the FLDS were forced out their homes, however, west Texans did what they do best: rally to help a neighbor in distress.
After the raid, Dana Owens got a call at the First Baptist Church where she was helping out with a funeral luncheon.
"If you all have any food left," Owens recalled her fellow church member saying, "let us have it to take to the sheriff's office."
"I said, 'What's the matter? Is his wife on vacation?"
Soon, word spread that about 400-plus children were being moved to temporary shelters in Eldorado, and later, San Angelo. Businesses and church groups rounded up items such as bottled water, food and clothes.
In Eldorado, one woman spent nearly $1,000 on sippy cups and diapers, Owens said, while in San Angelo, a dentist walked into Wal-Mart and bought a bundle of baby clothes.
"They were just coming in left and right, buying stuff and buying stuff," said Laurie Wallace, whose son works at the store.
But the west Texans soon realized the cultural chasm that exists between them and their FLDS neighbors. The FLDS children, they say, left trays of pizza and deli meats left virtually untouched.
"They [the children] were pulled out of an environment that is totally foreign to us, and ours is foreign to them," Dorie said.
But this new and unrecognizable world may be where many of these children stay, at least for the time being. "I just hope the kids aren't too traumatized by it," Wallace said.